ETH 下一世代：機構質押、AI agent 與金融顛覆（Serotonin、Bit Digital、Ethereum Institutional、ETHgas）

0:00ETH 下一世代：從人到機器

0:00大家好，歡迎來到 Bit Digital 舞台的精彩座談。我是 Amanda Cassatt，也就是大家熟悉的 Amanda.eth，Serotonin 的創辦人兼執行長。我們致力於把全球突破性的科技和金融產品帶到市場。今天我們邀請到幾位非常厲害的來賓，首先想請 Sam 來談談，什麼是 ETH 的下一世代？誰會是 Ethereum 網路的下一波大用戶？All right, we've got a wonderful panel here today on the Bit Digital stage. I'm Amanda Cassatt, aka Amanda.eth. I am the founder and CEO of Serotonin. We bring the world's breakthrough technologies and financial products to market. We have incredible guests on our panel today, and I'll start with Sam on the end. What does the next generation of ETH actually mean? Who or what is the next big user of the Ethereum network?

0:44這個問題很好，什麼是 ETH 的下一世代用戶？我認為上一個時代，我們花了很多力氣讓人類進入 ETH 網路。但下一個時代，重點會是把軟體、把機器帶進 Ethereum。現在我們已經看到 agentic 經濟的出現，這些 AI agent 會自己買票、買運算資源、買資料，這些交易都需要支付。傳統銀行體系是為人類設計的，並不適合 agent，因為 agent 24 小時全年無休地運作。所以我認為大家低估了 Ethereum 跟 AI 的連結，Ethereum 很適合 agentic 經濟，這是我今天想多聊的主題。Okay, question is, what's the next generation of ETH users? What I think in the last era, we put a lot of calories in getting humans onto the ETH network. I think the next era is really bringing software, bringing machines into Ethereum. And what's happening today, and where that's going, is that we have an agentic economy. We have agents now operating. They're having, they're engaging in activities that involve buying tickets, buying compute, buying data, and all these transactions require payments. And so the banking system was really made for human beings. They weren't made for agents, and agents never sleep. They operate 24/7. So. My thesis is that Ethereum and artificial intelligence, people really underappreciate the connection between the two. In fact, Ethereum is perfect for the agentic economy, and that's the stuff I'd like to talk about a little bit later today.

1:45機器用戶崛起與區塊空間挑戰

1:45Kevin，你怎麼看 ETH 的下一世代？誰會是新用戶？又有哪些挑戰和里程碑？我同意 Sam 的觀點，現在我們正把傳統世界的資產慢慢代幣化，放到鏈上，這些資產未來會跟傳統金融的對應物一起交易。agent 上鏈後會選擇阻力最小的路徑，他們討厭摩擦，所以我們會看到交易量和流動性自然提升。不過還有很多實體世界的用戶還沒上鏈，這部分 Matthew 會再分享。對我來說，金融基礎建設還有很大空間，大家現在把加密貨幣當成股票或類股權工具在交易，但固定收益這塊還完全沒被開發。一般人有很多房貸、信用卡債，但真正交易股票的比例很低。Awesome. Kevin, what does next generation of ETH mean to you? Who or what are the next users? What are the next big challenges, milestones that we're going to uncover? Yeah, I think to echo some of what Sam's saying here, there's this world where we're slowly tokenizing assets from the traditional world and putting them on chain, and these assets will invariably trade alongside their TradFi counterpart. As you get agents coming on chain, they will basically go through the path of least resistance, and agents don't like friction, and so. We will see that invariably volumes and liquidity will pick up. Having said that, there's still pockets of users out there, physical, real-world users that we have yet to bring on chain, which I think Matthew will talk a little bit about. But before we get into that, I'm particularly interested in still building the financial infrastructure, as much as most of us. See and feel crypto as like trading stocks or equity-like instruments, I think the world of fixed income is completely untapped, where, again, the everyday person has hundreds of thousands of mortgage debt or credit debt, and yet how much equities does your average everyday person trade?

3:03Matthew，你怎麼看 ETH 的下一世代？我完全同意前面說的。其實現在的 Ethereum 跟 2015、2016 年時已經完全不同，未來幾年還會再大變。像是擴容、隱私強化，還有很多新功能，讓 Ethereum 能在不犧牲安全性和去中心化的前提下大規模擴展，特別是針對 agentic 用例，這會是很大的升級。Next generation of ETH, what does it mean to you? I agree with all of that. We should probably also look at, like— The Ethereum of today looks nothing like or very different to the Ethereum of 2015, 2016, and Ethereum in the next few years is going to look just as different yet again. I mean, the scaling that's happening, the privacy enhancement, and all of these additional features that allow for the scale without compromising on security and decentralization to enable the scale of Both value flows and particularly with agentic use cases, allowing that to operate easily on Ethereum going forward is the big upgrade as well.

3:49為什麼機器選擇區塊鏈？ETH 與 AI 的語言共通性

3:49Sam，如果未來大規模交易的是軟體，為什麼他們要選擇區塊鏈結算，而不是銀行？agent 不會走進銀行開戶，也不會等一天才結算。銀行體系是為人設計的，但 agent 是大規模運作的，未來可能會有數兆筆交易發生。其實區塊鏈就是機器原生的貨幣，AI 則是機器原生的智慧，兩者的語言很像。AI 裡所有語言都被轉成 token，區塊鏈上金錢、債券利息也都用 token 表示，這種語言的共通性會真正釋放 agentic 經濟的潛力。Sam, if software is going to be the one transacting at scale, why would they choose to settle on a blockchain as opposed to going through a bank? Well, an agent isn't going to walk into a bank and open up an account. An agent is not going to wait a day for a settlement to happen. The banking system was made for human beings, and agents operate at scale. There's trillions of transactions that would potentially occur. When agents are operating at scale. And also, if you think about it, blockchain is machine-native intelligence, and AI is machine-native—sorry, blockchain is machine-native money, and AI is machine-native intelligence. And there's a very similar language that occurs between artificial intelligence and blockchain. You have an AI. All language is represented into tokens, and in blockchain you have money, bond interests, all represented in tokens. And that's a very similar language. And that language is what I think will really unleash the agentic economy.

5:02機器用戶帶來的區塊空間與 ETH 供需變化

5:02Kevin，如果機器成為 Ethereum 最大用戶，區塊空間和 ETH 會怎麼變？首先，機器真的能成為最活躍用戶嗎？現在還有 12 秒的區塊時間，對機器來說太慢了。雖然比等一天好，但還是不夠快。Ethereum 早期比 Bitcoin 快很多，但現在正轉型成更即時的系統，未來交易延遲會降到幾百毫秒。這樣一來，對區塊空間的需求會大增，Ethereum 會變成類似高頻交易的平台，交易量暴增，gas 價格也會上升。不過隨著 Glamsterdam 升級和零知識證明技術，未來幾年區塊空間會擴大 15 到 20 倍，能處理更多交易，延遲也會更低。Yeah, Kevin, I mean, if machines become Ethereum's largest users, what happens to block space and what happens to ETH? Yeah, so we, well, first of all, I guess, can machines become Ethereum's most active users? And one of the issues we have right now is, well, there's still 12-second block times. And if I'm a machine, I don't want to wait 12 seconds to, you know, do this transaction. You don't want to wait for the weekend? Better than a day. Yes, it's better than waiting a day. Absolutely, totally with you on that front. Yeah, as much as Ethereum was much faster than Bitcoin in the early days, but to that effect, you know, we're undergoing this transition where much of Ethereum will start to become more real time. And transactions will be processed, you know, within hundreds of milliseconds type of latency. In that environment, basically you have like this incredible demand for block space on Ethereum. And so when you make Ethereum effectively like a HFT or high-frequency-like platform, you're going to start to see a lot more trades. That's going to drive the price of gas up because block space is limited. However, with Glamsterdam, the update we're going through right now, and some of the research in zero-knowledge proofs, we're going to increase the size of the tunnel, the size of the pipe by 15, 20 times in the next few years. And so, you know, that's going to enable us to, you know, bring in 15, 20 times the number of transactions. We'll be getting through much faster. So. It's the right time for lower latency.

6:31但我想挑戰一下，交易量增加確實會推高區塊空間需求，但這一定會發生在 Ethereum 嗎？這還有討論空間。現在每月大約燒掉 7,000 萬的 gas（ETH），但每月發行量有 2 億，所以淨發行還是 1.5 億。如果區塊空間需求成長 10 到 20 倍，需求就會超過供給，ETH 每月就會淨燒毀，gas 價格也會上升。未來幾年我們會從現在這種負利差環境，轉變成每月燒掉五、六億 ETH 的狀態。這時候，ETH 的需求就會來自鏈上交易量和落地的需求。I would like to challenge that. Yes, I do agree that more transactions mean a higher demand for block space, but does that necessarily mean that it goes to Ethereum? I think that's still a question. I think that's an important conversation to have. As in to the L2 or L1, or how are you— Oh, that's a good point. I didn't think of it that way. Yeah. Well, so the way I see it is that— You know how much gas is burned. And right now, we're at like 70 million a month, for example. And so you have 70 million a month of gas burned, or ETH burned, but you have this issuance where we have like 200 million a month. So there's a net issuance, basically like 150 million. So if this is the gas burn and that's the issuance, if we have Ten or twenty times the demand for block space, then basically the demand side of the equation, it outpaces the supply side, and you basically get a net burn of ETH every month. And so I think that's where the ETH gas would go up. Exactly. So I see in the next couple of years us going from this negative carry type of environment where we're just issuing 150 million ETH every month. to us burning maybe five, six hundred million of ETH every month. And so just as, you know, maybe you— challenge met, you got it. Just as you or, you know, Dats or anyone might be buying ETH out there, well, if they stop buying ETH, like where does the demand come from? Yeah, and that'll come from just transaction throughput and people just wanting to land trades on-chain.

8:00為何 agent 會選擇 Ethereum？機構 ETH 質押與生態

8:00現在大家都認為 agent 會成為區塊鏈的顛覆性用戶，但為什麼他們會自動選擇 Ethereum？因為可靠性、安全性、流動性。agent 會去價值最多的地方，Ethereum 在 TVL、價值、應用上都遙遙領先，所以 agent 也會選擇這裡。agent 不喜歡摩擦，但也很聰明，會評估風險。Ethereum 之所以有價值，是因為夠穩、夠安全、流動性強。特定應用可能會去 L2，但 L1 的規模還是很有吸引力。人類會來 Ethereum，agent 也會。It's a fair point. I think, like, a lot of— It's probably largely consensus now that agents will be a transformative user in blockchain. Every other blockchain will sit up here and say they're going to use my chain. Well, that was my question. Yeah, so why would they automatically come to Ethereum? That's still a question. Yeah, why would they choose Ethereum? Well, reliability, security, liquidity. Exactly. Because an agent, we're going to use it to ultimately add value. Whether that's through efficiency, through financial literacy, whatever it may be, the agent has to be present where the value is. And Ethereum absolutely dominates when it comes to most metrics of TVL, of value, of use cases. And so naturally, the agent to unlock the most value will go there. Agents also. Certainly don't like friction, but also they have, like, a lot of intelligence and discernment to understand the risk or risk-adjusted activities that they're taking. The reason most value is on Ethereum is because of the lindiness, the security, resilience, and the liquidity. And so I think agents will compound that. For specific use cases, they might go to the L2, but with the scale at L1, that's certainly very compelling. And so I think the same reasons that humans went to Ethereum and continue to, agents will do that as well.

9:17Matthew，很多機構現在都在想怎麼讓手上的 ETH 發揮生產力。現在大約三分之一的 ETH 被質押，基礎年化報酬約 2.5%。你覺得目前有哪些方式能讓 ETH 產生收益？每種方式的風險又是什麼？Agreed. Yeah, Matthew, I'm also curious. I mean, I think a lot of the institutions you speak to are thinking about how to make money on their ETH. About a third of all ETH is staked today, and the base yield is around 2.5%. I'm curious, what are the real ways to make ETH productive right now, and what does each one cost you in risk?

9:39我跟機構討論最多的是把 Ethereum 當成基礎設施。無論是 agent、金融機構還是一般用戶，都需要鏈上的資產和應用。機構把這當成升級金融科技堆疊、提升效率的大好機會。大家討論很多的是穩定幣、存款代幣、代幣化證券，現在很多貨幣型基金也被拿來當抵押品。這只是機構採用 Ethereum 的開始，ETH 這個資產是整個生態的基礎，無論是安全性、流動性還是質押，所有鏈上活動都會帶動 ETH 的需求。現在不只 L1，像 Robinhood 這樣的平台也把 ETH 當成 gas token，生態越來越大。Yeah, I think most of my conversations with institutions is around Ethereum as infrastructure, because whether it's agents, financial institutions, or... Typical users, they need assets and use cases on chain. And so institutions see this as a huge opportunity to upgrade their financial technology stack and to unlock these kinds of efficiencies. So a lot of the conversation is around stablecoins and deposit tokens, tokenized securities, and we see a huge kind of uptake in money market funds that are collateral for those. Stablecoins. So this is just the beginning of institutional adoption of Ethereum and the Ethereum ecosystem as infrastructure, and Ether, the asset, fundamentally underpins that, both from a security perspective throughout decentralized finance, liquidity and pair assets, and of course from a staking perspective as well. So it naturally benefits from all activity on the chain. And is increasingly used both layer one, or if you just take something like a Robinhood, which is a fantastic success story recently, as an additional gas token and token that's used throughout the ecosystem there as well. So it continues to proliferate too.

10:54機構參與 ETH：收益、模式與資產配置

10:54Kevin，你在 ETH 區塊空間和基礎設施上有很多創新，機構要怎麼用 ETH 賺錢？為什麼他們應該參與這個生態？有幾個角度，首先是流動性池和機會。現在我們把很多東西代幣化，放到鏈上，無論是用戶還是 bot、agent 都在即時交易，這會帶來更高的區塊空間需求。傳統銀行如果不參與就會被淘汰。如果我持有 ETH，最好的方式就是投資基礎設施，任何能提升網路吞吐量、容量、需求的東西，像金融原生工具，都會推升 ETH 需求。我們也會跟 DATS 等大型 ETH 持有者合作。Kevin, I'm curious if you have a perspective on this, since you've kind of split the atom with Ethereum Blockspace and found new ways to make markets within the Ethereum infrastructure. What do you think are the most attractive ways for institutions to actually earn with their ETH? Why institutions should be involved in the ecosystem? So there's a number of perspectives there. The first one is— I'd say just like the pools of liquidity and the opportunity. And so we're in this environment where, again, we're tokenizing many things and it's coming on-chain, and we have this pool of users and bots and agents just trading this in real time as fast as possible. So in this, I guess, in this market, we will invariably just see like far more demand for the block space. And if I'm a traditional Bank, or, like, I have to be involved. I have to get involved in these businesses. I can't not be on-chain. And so, you know, that's how they would come on-chain. But if I'm holding ETH, what do I do and how do I get involved? I'd say just invest it broadly in infrastructure. Anything that increases, you know, the throughput, the capacity, the demand side of the network, be it— Financial primitives, all that just drives so much more demand for ETH. And so that's why we work closely with, you know, DATS and other people with large pools of ETH.

12:19Sam，Bit Digital 是全球前五大 ETH 持有者之一，還有 WhiteFiber 這家 AI 資料中心公司。你們的模式有什麼不同？其實現在很多公開上市的 ETH 持有公司，市值都低於帳上 ETH 價值。這個模式的關鍵在於，如果市值高於資產淨值（NAV），可以發行新股；如果低於 NAV，就沒辦法發新股買資產。現在大多數 DAT（Digital Asset Trust）都低於 NAV，所以這個模式其實不太行。我們早就轉型成戰略資產公司，不是單純累積，而是配置到關鍵基礎設施，像 Ethereum 和 WhiteFiber。這樣我們成為唯一同時代表 ETH 和 AI 的資本市場代理公司，兩者交集就是 Bit Digital 的定位。Yes, Sam, let's talk about how it's actually going as one of the largest holders of ETH on the Bit Digital balance sheet. A lot of the largest ETH holders that are publicly listed are trading below the value of the ETH on their books. So I'm curious, what separates a model that works from one that doesn't? Yeah, that's a challenging question. So just taking a step back, Bit Digital owns one of the top five holders of ETH in the world. We have that on a balance sheet. We stake it. We also own about 60%, a controlling shareholding interest of a company called WhiteFiber, which is an artificial intelligence data center developer. And that company is also listed on NASDAQ. The market cap of that company is actually larger than Bit Digital's. So. Depending on how you measure our net asset value without white fiber, we're trading at a premium. With white fiber, we're trading under net asset value. The only way a DAT really works is very simple. You issue shares if you're trading above a premium on your NAV. And if you're not, you can't really issue shares to buy the underlying equity, buying the underlying asset, rather. So these days, a lot of DATs are trading below their net asset value. For us, it depends on how you calculate it, with white fiber or with white fiber. But the model, the business model, just unfortunately is a bit shitty. It's not working. And we saw that a while ago. We positioned ourselves to be not quite a DAT, but rather a strategic asset company. So what does that mean? We allocate, rather than accumulate, we allocate to certain infrastructure plays. We believe Ethereum is a certain type of infrastructure. It's digital asset infrastructure. We allocated money by owning this WhiteFiber AI company. And so, with those two things on the balance sheet, Bit Digital is very simple, just two line items: the ETH. And the Wi‑Fi, Wi‑Fi is the ticker. And the reason why we did that is because we wanted to be in the intersection. We're talking a lot today about agents. We're talking about Ethereum. We're the only company in the world, as far as I know, that's actually a capital markets proxy for both of those things. We have ETH on our balance sheet. We have WhiteFiber on our balance sheet, which represents artificial intelligence, and that's doing very well. And so we are the only ones that are an economic representation of these two things that intersect at Bit Digital. So that's how we positioned ourselves as a strategic asset company. And again, we're the only ones in the world doing that right now.

16:14ETH 與機構資產結構：比特幣的啟示與 DAO 模式

16:14Matthew，現在比特幣世界的代理公司（proxy）會賣掉部分比特幣，你覺得機構持有 ETH 的好結構是什麼？我認為 Ethereum DApp 跟 Bitcoin DApp 最大的不同是 ETH 有收益，不用舉債也能有收入，這些收入又能回饋生態系，產生正向循環。質押收益可以用來壯大生態，生態成長又反映在 ETH 價格上，這讓 ETH 成為有生產力的資產。Matthew, just with the, the— That question, the question around institutions that are publicly traded that hold ETH on the balance sheet. It's been interesting to watch the proxies in the Bitcoin world actually go ahead and sell some of their Bitcoin. I mean, you see all these different institutional structures. What do you think the good structures are for institutions that want to hold ETH? Yeah, I think. I think what sets Ethereum DApps apart from Bitcoin DApps is the fact that Ethereum has a yield. And so without having to take debt, you can actually have revenue that can be utilized. And we see DApps putting that revenue to use within the ecosystem. So it's much more likely that you can have a positive feedback where that staking yield is utilized to help benefit the ecosystem, and the ecosystem growth reflects in the Ethereum price. So I think that's what sets Ethereum as a productive asset aside in terms of the DAO choice.

17:13那你跟機構溝通時，有沒有遇到質疑說 Ethereum 會成為基礎結算層，但 ETH 這個資產未必能吸收所有需求、反映在價格上？其實這不是機構關心的問題。ETH 的基礎設施最有韌性和安全，這是機構最在意的。ETH 這個資產透過質押幫助網路安全，我不認為未來會有 Ethereum 生態成長但 ETH 價格沒反映的情況。And then my other question for you is, when you do talk to these institutions, do you ever get the pushback that it's going to be Ethereum adoption being that base settlement layer, but that ETH itself, the asset, might not be able to— Absorb all of that demand and turn it into price action. How do you respond to that critique? It's, yeah, it's not something that is a concern from institutions. ETH, the infrastructure, is the most resilient and secure, and that's what institutions are interested in first and foremost. Ether, the asset, plays a big part in that, in the sense that through staking, it helps to secure the network. I don't think that there's a scenario in the future where we continue to see the Ethereum infrastructure adoption, TVL growth, and increasingly transaction growth, and that doesn't pass on to Ether, the asset.

18:17機構上鏈的合規、隱私與流動性困境

18:17Kevin，你跟機構互動時，他們最在意什麼？像是合規、前置交易（front-running）、三明治攻擊、交易費流向、隱私等問題。很多機構會選擇 L2 或自己開 L1，但這樣就沒流動性。如果你像 Stripe 有自己的網路還說得過去，但沒幾百萬用戶就必須接到主流流動性池。為此我們推了一個方案，讓機構能在 Ethereum 上有自己的專屬通道，不會被前置交易，交易費也只付給已知驗證者，就像美國的 E-ZPass。我們稱這為機構專屬通道，讓機構能安全、合規地上鏈，最終資本還是會流回 Ethereum。What do you think of that, Kevin? So when I talk to institutions or my exposure to them, there's a few points, right? Like who is throwing money at the bank to run a POC? And there are some chains where they're very focused, and they'll just throw money at you to try the chain. But, you know, again, no one loses their job for trying Ethereum. And so at the end of the day, I think there's a couple considerations for the institutions. One is— You know, can I, I have a set of compliance and controls. Can I adhere to those by coming on-chain onto Ethereum? And so, is there front-running? Is there sandwich attacking? No, I don't like that. Who am I paying transaction fees to? Is it to this unknown validator in some sanctioned country or some sanctioned entity? And so these are some of the questions that come up. Privacy is another one, but for the most part. The institutions would then choose like an L2, for example, or they start their own L1. But, you know, that might solve all those compliance controls, but there's no liquidity. So if you are like a Stripe and you have your own network, like that makes sense. But if you don't have, you know, millions of users, you need to tap into the liquidity pools themselves. And so for that reason, we have this initiative where Basically, any institution can now come on-chain on Ethereum with no front-running and paying, like, known validators, so you can effectively—they have their own lane. Like, they have, maybe this is a very U.S. thing, but, like, an E-ZPass. Exactly, right? So we've created this, what we call, like, an institutional access lane on Ethereum. So no front-running, OFAC controls, and basically you can get your stuff on-chain, and it's just like— You know, if I'm in the U.S. or Singapore, I trade with my qualified counterparties. They might trade with maybe less qualified counterparties, but eventually that capital is part of the global market, or, you know, eventually it'll be on Ethereum.

20:12機構採用的阻力：世代落差與資訊斷層

20:12Sam，現在 JP Morgan、BlackRock 都已經在公鏈 Ethereum 上發行代幣化資產，為什麼還有機構沒跟進？我覺得很大一部分是世代問題，就是 boomer（嬰兒潮世代）卡在那裡。年輕人都在交易加密貨幣，boomers 還是愛股票。等到 X 世代、千禧世代、Z 世代掌權，這些人早就習慣數位資產了。其實我跟 boomers 講 crypto 他們會反感，但說 digital assets 就沒事。總之，這就是世代落差，boomers 害怕改變，等他們退休或離開，年輕世代接手後，數位資產就會全面普及。Yeah, just directing this to Sam, I mean, I think the Ethereum, ETH... The thesis is working. Like, JP Morgan launched the tokenized money market fund on public Ethereum. It was 100 million this year. BlackRock started putting institutional share classes on-chain. I guess for the institutions that haven't moved, what do you think is holding them back? Is the question about whether, like, why banks haven't adopted, certain banks haven't adopted Ethereum? Is that the question? Adoption's happening, but it's not everybody yet. What do you think is holding back the folks that haven't? Well, I don't have a very politically correct answer. I think it's generational. I think it's just boomers. Boomers are in the way. I think that if young people really trade crypto, they don't really trade stocks as much as boomers do. You'll see when— Gen X and especially millennials and Gen Z, when they become into, you know, the seats of position and they control portfolio construction, this generation, this younger generation, the people here, they've normalized digital assets. I use the word digital assets because crypto is sometimes a dirty word with certain boomers, and as soon as I use digital assets, they're fine. But the point is, it's true. The point is, I think it's a generational thing. I think boomers are just not—they're just scared of stuff they don't understand, and they're afraid of change. And eventually they'll die, and you'll have, you know, a younger generation taking over, and they would have normalized digital assets or crypto, and finally we'll see a lot of things move. But I think it's a generational issue.

21:48Matthew 補充，大家都知道區塊鏈能大幅提升效率，對機構來說就是省錢。但前期要投入很多資源，所以反而是 JP Morgan、BlackRock 這種大機構最先投入，因為他們有能力、有資源。現在如果你想代幣化基金，只要找 Bank of New York 或 JP Morgan 就能搞定。這些大機構已經建立好專業能力，後面跟進的會很快。I speak to these teams regularly, and it's an interesting— Do you say digital assets or crypto? It depends, it depends. The interesting thing about digital asset blockchain adoption is we all understand that in the medium term, it's going to increase efficiency considerably. And for institutions, that means big cost savings. But before you get to that point, you have a lot of upfront investment. So what we see in this industry is, rather than the challengers racing ahead with innovation, J.P. Morgan and BlackRock is the biggest bank in the world and the biggest asset manager. And we see similarly across G-SIBs, large financial institutions, they are the teams that have The internal capacity, resources, and capability to invest in this upfront and lead the way. So it's kind of flipped on its head. And so it's a positive thing that BlackRock, JP Morgan, and many others are, if you look at the data, clearly choosing Ethereum, almost often exclusively for their institutional asset deployments. And so they're leading the way, and not only Do they set an example for what to do? They now, if you look at Bank of New York's capability to tokenize custody and do digital transfer agency, or J.P. Morgan, Conexus's capabilities, they are all partners in the traditional fund service, fund admin, TA world. And so now, if you want to tokenize a fund, you can call up Bank of New York, and they can help you with that, or you can call up your existing partners. So. The professionalization and capability is there for subsequent teams to adopt. So it's not surprising, and we're going to see that not long tail, but the subsequent adopters come quite quickly, I think.

23:35Kevin 補充，資訊落差很大。我以前在 Morgan Stanley 帶 40 個博士做金融工程，很多老同事還是不懂 Ethereum。傳統金融很多東西其實用 Excel 就能搞定，像借貸中間有 12 個中介，Ethereum 只要 1、2 個。銀行會不會上鏈？我認為很難，因為這會讓他們被淘汰。真正會上鏈的是那些不是靠收費賺錢的 real money account，他們會選最省手續費的地方，最後還是 Ethereum。I was going to say there's a huge information gap, coming back to boomers and stuff. Like, there's a huge, like, so I did banking for a number of years. I was at Morgan Stanley, led financial engineering. 40 PhDs in my team. I talk to a whole bunch of my old peers, and they're just like, Hey, tell me about the Ethereum thing, and, like, they still just don't get it. So there's a large information gap. Secondly, we need to kind of distinguish, like, who is it in TradFi that we kind of want to bring on-chain, because at the same rate, banks, like, for much of what you do in the banking system, you can replace it with a spreadsheet. And everyone knows that. And so you take fixed income or lending and borrowing, there's like 12 intermediaries between lending and borrowing. And again, Ethereum, you can do that with just like maybe one or two intermediaries. So what is the impetus or the reason for maybe the banking part of the traditional world to come on chain? And it's very little. It's, I think of it, what's the frog in the boiling pot of water type of thing. And so for the banks part, I can't see them really coming on chain because this will completely disintermediate them. The other parts are where I call, like, real money accounts, people who don't make monies primarily off of fees. For those guys, then you're going through the path of least resistance. And this comes back to the earlier discussion around tokenization. Once we do tokenize everything, bring it on chain. They will be transacting where they pay the least amount of fees, and eventually that'll be on Ethereum.

25:41未來機會：鏈上身份、隱私與 agent 錢包

25:41那現場的 builder 應該做什麼？Matthew 說，現在 DeFi 世界是無許可資產，未來會有大量需要 KYC 的機構資產，鏈上身份會是大機會，能提升有許可資產的效率和組合性。另一個重點是隱私，Ethereum 預設公開，但現在有很多強大的隱私解決方案，這對機構和所有用戶都很重要。I'm curious, though. What do you think, maybe we'll start with Matthew. What do you think the people in this room should be building or investing in that doesn't exist yet? I think one of the big—we have kind of two worlds colliding. So we have all of the existing DeFi use cases and capability, which were initially designed for permissionless assets. So they could move freely, and we have all of the composability and interoperability that we love, all of the buzzwords. And now we have increasingly going to have a huge number of permissioned assets. Institutional assets require KYC and some form of identity, be that off-chain or on-chain. I think there's a big opportunity in on-chain identity to help enable. A more efficient usage and composability of permissioned assets. And then, of course, the other side is on privacy. Ethereum is public by default, but increasingly has very capable privacy solutions across the stack, which is important not just for institutions, but also for all users. So I think those are the two big opportunities that are being worked on.

26:52Sam 說，如果我是年輕人，現在最值得做的就是 agent 錢包，要有權限、消費上限等規則，讓大家敢放心把錢交給軟體。還有 agent 的 KYC（KYA，Know Your Agent），要讓大家知道自己在跟哪個 agent 互動。這兩個產品都很有潛力，有想做的歡迎來找我投資。Sam, I'm curious what you think people here should be building or investing in. If I was a young person again, I would certainly, I mean, there's so many ideas now because of this whole agentic economy. But, I mean, two easy ones to do. And if anybody's looking for a startup idea and they work on this, talk to me. I'm probably going to invest in it, which is really just anything involving, for example, building wallets for agents. You have to build. Permissions, spending limits. You have to build these parameters around these wallets so that people can trust software with money. Agents with money is a scary thing, but you have to build the rules around it. So if you can build that, that's very interesting. And I think, I think, I think Matthew, you mentioned maybe, I'm not sure if you mentioned this, I think you did, or you touched on it. Which is basically there is a lot of KYC software for humans, but we need that for agents. So I don't know if you call it KYA. I'm not sure. I think I invented that just now. But you have to know your agent. People, counterparties need to know which agents and what they're dealing with and who they're interacting with. So if you have agents in the wild with Wallets that have guardrails and you have KYA for agents, I think those are really two great, neat products to be working on today. And it's also great to have assembled these pools of strategic capital that benefit from making sure that these technologies get built.

28:26ETH 長線勝出：銀行與金融系統的顛覆

28:26Kevin 說，最簡單的策略就是放空銀行、做多 ETH。Sam 補充，很多人以為 Ethereum 跟 Bitcoin 是競爭對手，其實 Bitcoin 是跟黃金競爭，Ethereum 則是要顛覆整個金融系統，把所有中介都去掉。我以前是律師和銀行家，發現 Ethereum 會讓我們這些人失業，所以就跳出來了。銀行之所以不想碰 Ethereum，就是因為會被淘汰。但那些真正有價值、不是靠收租的機構，會因為 Ethereum 而受益。Maybe, Kevin, if you want to bring us home, what do you think needs to be built in order to realize this future vision? I'd say there's probably a couple of parts to it, but it depends on the time horizon, I'd say, for one. But I would short the banking system and just long ETH as the most simplest play. Do you agree with that, Sam? Short the banks, long ETH? You know, on that note, a lot of people actually think that Ethereum competes with Bitcoin. It doesn't. Bitcoin competes with the gold markets as a store of value. And to your point, Ethereum competes with the financial system because Ethereum can rewrite the entire financial system and it can disintermediate all the middlemen. I used to be a lawyer and a banker, and when I found out about Ethereum, I jumped out of that profession because I knew eventually Ethereum was going to put all of us out of a job, us lawyers and us bankers. You were talking about how banks take 12 steps and Ethereum is now just one step. So. That's one, and that's another reason why banks don't want to deal with Ethereum. It's just going to put them out of a job. So, yeah, that's my point. I'll get off my soapbox now. I think the banks, and like you said, where it's not like rent-seeking, where true value is added, those institutions will benefit tremendously from the adoption of Ethereum. And so I think that they can do incredibly well, as well as Ethereum as we grow. So I think coming back to time horizon, there's a very long time horizon for this to happen. I think in the near term, there's an entire generation of people who are just non-banking. They're crypto native. And so, you know, the banks are going to lose them. So I think they have to come on-chain just to target these users for everyday services as well. Rewarding true utility and disintermediating rent-seeking. I think that's a very positive note about Ethereum to end on.

30:10感謝所有與談人，今天的討論非常精彩，也讓大家看到 ETH 未來的無限可能。謝謝大家！Thank you so much to all of our panelists. This was super fascinating and a great window into the future of ETH. Thanks so much, everybody. Thank you.